The inventive concept relates to memory devices, and more particularly to memory devices including a plurality of voltage regions, as well as methods for operating the same.
The capacity and speed of contemporary semiconductor memory devices used in high performance electronic systems are steadily increasing. The dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is one example of contemporary semiconductor memory devices. DRAM is a type of volatile memory and stores and retrieves data in accordance with electrical charge stored on a capacitor.
DRAM may perform internal operations using a variety of voltages (e.g., voltages generated at respective levels). It is also necessary to control the generation of certain voltages in accordance with desired operation performance characteristics, such as the desired frequency of a signal. As the number and variation of desired voltages increase, the corresponding arrangement of power rails required to communicate (e.g., transmit) such voltages may become quite complicated. Further, the number and configuration of circuits and constituent components (e.g., level shifters) associated with voltage regions and power rails used to generate and distribute desired voltages across a semiconductor memory device may adversely increase the power consumption of DRAM and/or its chip size.